


Nothing So True

by voleuse



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-26
Updated: 2004-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truth doesn't always lie in facts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing So True

**Author's Note:**

> Set during BtVS S1, but vague spoilers up to S5.

_i. Dream_

Giles insists she meet him in the library after patrol, explaining that she needs to do more research on the prophetic aspects of her dreams.

"If you can't tell a regular dream from a prophesy, how will you know what to expect?"

She rolls her eyes, but doesn't have much in terms of an argument, aside from the fact that she hates research as a general rule.

So, the library. He seats her at a table with a stack of books, then disappears into his office to make himself tea (she assumes). Dutifully, she reads.

The clock's ticking seems to grow louder with each page that she scans, and her eyelids droop. Even switching from an old watcher's diary to a psychology textbook to a dusty book of spells doesn't help alleviate her sleepiness, and she's about to give up and go home. Then--

She sees a flash of a figure, dark hair and shadowed face, stooped but indisputably tall. It passes between the stacks quickly enough that she doesn't get more of a glimpse of it. Him?

She follows, and then everything gets a little fuzzier.

_ii. Death_

She's in the desert. At least, she's pretty sure it's the desert, because once her elementary school took a field trip to Palm Springs, to that place that's like the zoo but not. Also, there's a lot of sand, but she can't hear anything but the roaring in her own ears.

(She's not dumb. She just likes to state the obvious. It makes things clearer. Rules things out.)

The sun is setting, too quickly, like in those nature documentaries, and soon the moon is out, and she hears something else.

Screaming.

Stake in hand, she runs toward the source, sees a young woman, naked except for rags and mud, set against a gang of ragged vampires.

If this was Sunnydale, Buffy wouldn't hesitate to jump into the fray, but she's on unfamiliar ground, and she stops, entranced by the mad whirl of the woman, the way she leaps and kicks and strikes and, yes, stakes the vampires.

Except for the last one, who catches her unawares and wounded, and sinks his teeth into her neck.

Buffy feels the teeth in her own throat, and she knows exactly when the woman dies.

_iii. Despair_

There's nothing but blackness for a while, and then she rushes back into herself, and there's fire all around her, and the smell of blood permeates even through the smoke.

She sees the back of a man, clutching a young girl, and a sword on the ground.

The girl whispers something, and Buffy feels that pain again, but with it comes resignation.

She knows the girl could have won, had she kept fighting.

_iv. Destiny_

Everything fades to white, whiter than white, and she sees a cat creep in the distance, ink-dark.

There's a swirl of heat around and behind her, golden as the sun, and when she turns, a gilt man stands there.

She laughs. "Wait, I think I know this one."

He tilts his head, looks over her shoulder, and then a woman whispers behind her. "You know nothing. Yet."

Buffy half-turns, so that her back is to neither of them, and crosses her arms. "You want to tell me what I'm doing here?"

The man smirks. "That would be revealing our purposes, would it not?"

"It would," the woman responds. "I dislike the idea."

"And _I_," Buffy grinds out, "dislike being bounced around like I've been bitching at Tiny Tim."

"Truly?" The woman's gaze sharpens, pins Buffy in one place. "Then pay more attention."

"To what?"

They laugh.

_v. Delirium_

And laugh and laugh and laugh until there's no sound, no color, no taste but the grating grind of their amusement.

Buffy wants to cry, wants to open her mouth and wail for help, but the world is cracking open and everything is light. There's a dragon in the sky, she thinks, and monsters crawling everywhere, and there's something, _something_ that she wants to save, something precious, and she made a promise, but she's falling--

Down, and then there's blessed darkness, and then a splash, and someone's holding her under, and she can't breathe, can't breathe, can't--

_Buffy? Buffy, what's wrong?_

She opens her eyes, and she's back in the desert.

_vi. Desire_

The sun weighs heavily on her skin, makes her blood surge through her veins, and she realizes that she's not alone. The woman she saw die, the woman of rags and mud, is a few feet away, sprawled gracefully on the ground.

This time, however, she's not wearing anything at all, and bowed against her body is a vampire, though his face is smooth and his teeth blunt. _It's day_, Buffy thinks, _it's all wrong_. But she can't look away, can't put together the pieces of what should be and what shouldn't.

He looks familiar, and then she looks again at the Slayer on the ground, and this time it's her, her face and hair and body and voice, and she feels everything she is feeling, and she doesn't want it to end, ever--

_Buffy! Buffy, wake up!_

She starts, and frowns, and she's alone again.

_vii. Destruction_

"This is starting to feel kind of Bill Murray," she mutters to herself, watching the sun slide down through the sky.

Giles appears at her side with a _pop_. "Buffy," he exclaims. "You're all right."

"And my very own Andie MacDowell," she continues without pause. Then she wrinkles her nose. "Except, ew. Not."

The relief on Giles's face transforms into the familiar exasperation, and he stares up at the rapid descent of the sun for a moment before he mutters something in Latin.

"What was that?" Buffy squints her eyes at him.

Giles shrugs, tucks his hand into his jacket and produces and handful of dried flowers. Bends to gather a handful of sand, then mutters over them, ignoring Buffy's repeated queries.

The desert shatters into the library, where Buffy wakes with a gasp. Giles is standing in front of her, a concerned look on his face.

"What," Buffy asks, wiping a speck of drool from the corner of her mouth, "the _hell_?"

Giles reaches across the table and grabs the book she had been using for a pillow. "Did you ever think, Buffy," he responds, "that it might not be the brightest idea to fall asleep in front of a spellbook centered about dreams?"

She looks at Giles, then the book, and then back at Giles, then hazards a grin.

"Oops?"


End file.
